CHAPTER XIV

GREATER THAN WEALTH.

They call thee rich, I call thee poor, Since, if thou darest not use thy store, But savest it only for thine heirs, The treasure is not thine but theirs.

COWPER.

When life is ruined for the sake of money's preciousness, the ruined life cares naught for the money. - JAPANESE

PROVERB.

" Better a cheap coffin and a plain funeral after a useful, unselfish life, than a grand mausoleum after a loveless, selfish

life."

Can wealth give happiness ? Look round and see what gay distress, what splendid misery. -YOUNG.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and serve them one's self ? - EMERSON.

The fewer our wants the nearer we resemble the gods. - SOCRATES.

Be noble ! and the nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping, but never dead, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.

Lowers.

"AND who is king today ?" Greuze, the painter, would ask his daughter each morning during the first great revolution in France. Then he would add: "Homer and Raphael will live longer than these temporary kings."

" You are a plebeian," said a patrician to Cicero. “I am a plebeian," replied the great Roman orator; "the nobility of my family begins with me, that of yours will end with you." No man deserves to be crowned with honor whose life is a failure, and he who lives only to eat and drink and accumulate money is surely not successful. The world is no better for his living in it. He never wiped a tear from a sad face, never kindled a fire upon a frozen hearth. There is no flesh in his heart; he worships no- god but gold.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON " My country is the world; my countrymen are all mankind." "A crown is his that world kings seldom enjoy."

If Adam were alive today, supposing him to have lived four thousand years ago, and had deposited fifty dollars in the bank every day of his life, without interest, he would have less money than Jay Gould had at the time of his death. Yet Gould's life was not a success, nor should his career be quoted to young men.

" What is the best thing to possess ? " asked any ancient philosopher of his pupils. One answered, "Nothing is better than a good eye, "- a figurative expression for a liberal and contented disposition. Another said, "A good companion is the best thing in the world; " a third chose a good neighbor; and a fourth, a wise friend. But Eleazas said: "A good heart is better than them all." "True," said the master; "thou hast comprehended in two words all that the rest have said, for he that hath a good heart will be contented, a good companion, a good neighbor, and will easily see what is fit to be done by him."

Queen Caroline Matilda of Denmark wrote on the window of her prison, with her diamond ring: 1' Oh, keep me innocent; make others great."

“Oh, if I could only go!" thought Pierre, the French boy, as he saw a man putting up a great bill with yellow letters, announcing that Madame Malibran would sing that night. But there was no bread in the house and he had not tasted food all day. How nice a sweet orange would seem to his poor sick mother, but he had not a penny in the world. From a little box he took some old, stained paper, glanced at his sleeping mother, and ran out into the Streets of London.

"Who did you say is waiting for me?" asked Malibran of her servant; “ I am already worn out with company." "He is only a very pretty little boy with yellow curls, who said if he can just see you he is sure you will not be sorry, and he will not keep you a moment." "Oh, well, let him come," smiled the great singer; "I can never refuse children."

"I came to see you because my mother is very sick," began Pierre, "and we are too poor to get food and medicine. I thought, perhaps, that if you would sing my little song at some of your grand concerts, maybe some publisher would buy it for a small sum, and so I could get food and medicine for my mother." "Did you compose it ?" asked Malibran, after humming the air, "you, a child! " looking at the boy attentively. And the words, too ? Would you like to come to my concert?" "Oh, yes! but I couldn't leave my mother." "I will send somebody to take care of your mother for the evening, and here is a crown with which you may go and get food and medicine. Here is also one of my tickets. Come tonight; that will admit you to a seat near me."

Pierre bought some oranges and other delicacies for his mother, and went to the Concert. Hall that night. The band struck up a plaintive little melody and Madame Malibran poured forth the touching words. Pierre clasped his hands for joy, but many a bright eye in that vast audience grew dim with tears. The next day the door of his humble home opened, and Madame Malibran laid her hand on his yellow curls, as she said to his mother: "Your little boy, madame, has brought you a fortune. I was offered this morning, by the best publisher in London, three hundred pounds for his little song, and after he has realized a certain amount from the sale, little Pierre here is to share the profits. Madame, thank God that your son has a gift from heaven." The boy fell upon his knees and asked God to bless the kind heart that had felt for the poor; and when, a few years later, Malibran sank to an early death, it was Pierre, the rich composer, who smoothed her pillow and cheered her last hours.

"What property has he left behind him ?" people ask when a man dies; but the angel who receives him asks, “ What good deeds hast thou sent before thee?"

“ Please, sir, buy some matches !” said a little boy, with a poor thin blue face, his feet bare and red, and his clothes only a bundle of rags, although it was very cold in Edinburgh that day. "No, I don't want any," said the gentleman. "But they're only a penny a box," the little fellow pleaded. "Yes, but you see I don't want a box" "Then I'll gie ye two boxes for a penny," the boy said at last.

"And so, to get rid of him," says the gentleman who tells the story in an English paper, "I bought a box, but then I found I had no change, so I said, ' I'll buy a box tomorrow.'

"' Oh, do buy them tonight,' the boy pleaded again; ' I'll rin and get ye the change ; for I'm very hungry.' So I gave him the shilling, and he started away. I waited for the boy, but no boy came. Then I thought I had lost my shilling; but still there was that in the boy's face I trusted, and I did not like to think badly of him.

"Late in the evening a servant came and said a little boy wanted to see me. When the child was brought in, I found it was a smaller brother of the boy who got the shilling, but, if possible, still more ragged and thin and poor. He stood a moment diving into his rags, as if he were seeking something, and then said, ' Are you the gentleman that bought matches frae Sandie ?' 'Yes!' ' Weel, then, here's fourpence oot o' yer shillin'. Sandie canna coom. He's no weel. A cart ran over him and knocked him doon; and he lost his bonnet, and his matches, and your elevenpence; and both his legs are broken, and he's no weel at a', and the doctor says he'll dee. And that's a' he can gie ye the noo,' putting fourpence down on the table; and then the child broke down into great sobs. So I fed the little man; and then I went with him to see Sandie.

"I found that the two little things lived with a wretched drunken stepmother; their own father and mother were both dead. I found poor Sandie lying on a bundle of shavings; he knew me as soon as I came in, and said, ' I got the change, air, and was coming back; and then the horse knocked me down, and both my legs are broken. And Reuby, little Reuby !I am sure I am deein' ! And who will take care o' ye, Reuby, when I am gane ?What will ye do, Reuby ?'

"Then I took the poor little sufferer's hand and told him I would always take care of Reuby: He under stood me, and had just strength to look at me as if he would thank me; then the expression went out of his blue eyes; and in a moment -

"He lay within the light of God, Like a babe upon the breast, Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest. "

Heaven meant principle to that little match-boy, bruised and dying. He knew little where he was to go, but he knew better than most of those who would have spurned him from their carriages, the value of honesty, truth, nobility, sincerity, genuineness, - the qualities that go to make heaven.

"I will give a hundred French Louis to any one who will venture to deliver these unfortunate people," said Count Spolverini when the swollen Adige swept away the bridge of Verona, with the exception of the centre arch. On this section stood a house whose inmates cried for help from the windows, as they saw the foundations slowly giving way. A young peasant seized a boat and pushed into the flood. He gained the pier, took the whole family into the little boat, and carried them safely to land. " Here is your money, my brave young fellow," said the count. "No," said the youth, "I do not sell my life; give the money to this poor family, who have need of it."

Robert, Duke of Normandy, eldest son of William the Conqueror, had been struck by a poisoned arrow, and his physicians said he must die unless the venom were sucked from the wound by some one, whose life would be forfeited. Robert disdained to receive such aid, but Sibilla sucked the wound while the duke lay asleep, and died to save her husband.

During an epidemic of yellow fever in Savannah, the whole force in a leading drug-store fled except one young clerk who refused to leave the post of duty, in spite of the protestations of his friends, and remained until the proprietor ordered him to close the doors. He went at once to another store, where he worked day and night, without even removing his clothes for sleep, and allowing himself but scanty time for meals. The owner of this shop was stricken with fever, and the boy nursed him until the man died. The cook was next prostrated and he watched with her, saving her life. A bosom friend was taken ill at this time; and the clerk, without neglecting his duties, nursed him to convalescence ; when he, too, was prostrated by the relentless plague.

Then the young man who had been nursed to recovery showed his. gratitude, watching with the clerk day and night, although the task was too great for his strength. "I will stick to him to the last," and "I shall not sleep tonight," were his last messages sent to friends who had not dared to come near. Both died that night.

In a similar epidemic at Memphis, the members of the Relief Committee were at their wits end, to obtain watchers, when a man with coarse features, close. cropped hair, and shuffling gait, went directly to one of the attending physicians and said: "I want to nurse."

The doctor looked at him critically, concluded he was not fitted for the work in any way, and replied: “ You are not needed."

"I wish to nurse," persisted the stranger. “ Try me for a week. If you don't like me, then dismiss me; if you do, pay me my wages."

"Very well," said the doctor, "I'll take you, although to be candid, I hesitate to do so" Then he added mentally, “I’ll keep my eye on him" But the man soon proved that he needed nobody's eye upon him. In a few weeks he had become one of the most valuable nurses on that heroic force. He was tireless and self-denying. Wherever the pestilence raged most fiercely he worked hardest. The suffering and the sinking adored him. To the neglected and the forgotten his rough face was as the face of an angel. He acted so strangely on pay-days, however, that he was followed through back streets to an obscure place, where he was seen to put his whole week's earnings into a relief-box for the benefit of the yellow-fever sufferers. Not long afterwards he sickened and died of the plague; and when his body was prepared for its unnamed grave, for he had never told who he was, a livid mark was found which showed that John, the nurse, had been branded as a convicted felon.

From London in 1676 the Great Plague had spread to Eyam in Derbyshire, a beautiful village nestling among the hills. The people in terror prepared to flee, when their rector, the Rev. William Mompesson, announced his intention to remain, and advised all to follow his example. "The plague is already among us," said he, " and it is not likely that any one could avoid carrying infection with him, wherever he might go. It would be selfish cruelty to other places to try to escape amongst their people, and thus spread the danger." Of their own free will all adopted his advice, and for seven months they calmly faced death in its most terrible form, four out of every five falling victims. Mr. Mompesson labored with all his might in all the offices of a nurse and a clergyman, find escaped scathless. although his faithful wife, who ably seconded his efforts, was among those whose funeral services he was compelled to pronounce. Supplies were brought from a distance through the agency of the Earl of Derbyshire, -and left on the hills above Eyam, the people leaving silver in payment at the same place. As a result of their self-sacrificing devotion there was not a case of plague in any of the surrounding villages.

That is but a low standard of greatness which measures a man by his employment or what he can buy rather than by what he is. A hod-carrier may be infinitely superior to the millionaire under whose bricks he staggers. The real world in which the laborer lives, as shown by his lofty conversation and noble living, may be as far above that of his employer as heaven is high above hell. The greatest monetary success on earth may mean the dreariest failure in the world to come.

What a shock was given to the would-be aristocratic world when President Lincoln took off his hat and bowed in silence to a colored ex-slave in Richmond, after that city had fallen. "God bless you, Massa Linkum," was the fervid exclamation of many an ignorant negro, after the Emancipation Proclamation had been delivered.

It is an interesting fact in this money-getting era that a poor author, or a seedy artist, or a college president with frayed coat-sleeves, has more standing in society and has more paragraphs written about him in the papers than many a millionaire. This is due, perhaps, to the malign influence of money-getting and to the benign effect, of purely intellectual pursuits. As a rule every great success in the money world means the failure and misery of hundreds of antagonists. Every success in the world of intellect and character is an aid and profit to society. Character is a mark cut upon something, and this indelible mark determines the only true value of all people and all their work.

Dr. Hunter said : "No man was ever a great man who wanted to be one." Artists cannot help putting them selves and their own characters into their works. The vulgar artist cannot paint a virtuous picture. The gross, the bizarre, the sensitive, the delicate, all come out on the canvas and tell the story of his life. Byron once wrote of a passion, which was one that he did not possess: -

" A thirst for gold,

The beggar's vice, which can but overwhelm

The meanest hearts."

He might have written "the noblest hearts," with truth. It is absurd to suppose that any one sees any inherent sin in riches any more than he does in tennis or dancing. But Christ, who said to his disciples, "Verily I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the Kingdom of Heaven," well understood the moral degeneracy that almost inevitably attends the struggle for great wealth. Somehow, in spite of many examples to the contrary, the race for thousands, and then millions, often strangles nobility of character and tarnishes the soul of honor. '

Money-getting has well been called unhealthy when it impoverishes the mind, or dries up the sources of the spiritual life; when it extinguishes the sense of beauty, and makes one indifferent to the wonders of nature and art; when it blunts the moral sense, and confuses the distinction between right and wrong, virtue and vice; when it stifles religious impulse, and blots all thoughts of God from the soul.

Money-getting is unhealthy, when it engrosses all one's thought, leads a man to live meanly and coarsely, to do without books, pictures, music, travel, for the sake of greater gains, and causes, him to find his deepest and most soul-satisfying joy, not in the culture of his heart or mind, not in doing good to himself or others, but in the adding of eagle to eagle, in the knowledge that the money in his chest is piled up higher and higher every year, that his account at the bank is constantly growing, that he is adding bonds to bonds, mortgages to mortgages, stocks to stocks.

An Arab who fortunately escaped death after losing his way in the desert, without provisions, tells of his feelings when he found a bag full of pearls, just as he was about to abandon all hope. " I shall never forget," said he, "the relish and delight that I felt on supposing it to be fried wheat, nor the bitterness and despair I suffered on discovering that the bag contained pearls."

A miser, robbed of a store of buried gold, over which he had long gloated in secret, was advised by a wise friend to bury some oyster-shells in the place where the gold had been, and visit them and chuckle over their possession daily.

In a fable an old miser is said to have kept a tame jackdaw that would steal pieces of money and hide them in a hole. The cat reproved him, as the coins would be of no use to him. The jackdaw replied: "Why, my master has a whole chestful and makes no more use of them than I."

King Midas, in the ancient myth, asked that everything be touched might be turned to gold, for then, he thought, he would be perfectly happy. His request was granted, but when his clothes, his food, his drink, the flowers he plucked, and even his little daughter, whom he kissed, were all changed into yellow metal, he begged that the Golden Touch might be taken from him. He had learned that many other things are intrinsically far more valuable than all the gold that was ever dug from the earth.

Socrates did not teach for money, but to propagate wisdom. He declared that the highest reward he could enjoy was to see mankind benefited by his labors.

Agassiz would not lecture at five hundred dollars a night, because he had no time to make money. Charles Sumner, when a senator, declined to lecture at any price, saying that his time belonged to Massachusetts and the nation. Spurgeon would not speak for fifty nights in America at one thousand dollars a night because he said he could do better: he could stay in London and try to save fifty souls. All honor to the comparative few in every walk of life who, amid the strong materialistic tendencies of our age; still speak and act earnestly, inspired by the hope of rewards other than gold or popular favor. These are our truly great men and women. They labor in their ordinary vocations with no less zeal because they give time and thought to higher things.

After he had conquered Mysore, Wellington was offered $500,000 by the East India Company, but he refused to touch the money.

Charles Napier was offered $100,000 by an Indian prince, as a bribe, but be refused the proffered gift of the barbarian.

Weirtz, of Brussels, said to a man who wanted to buy one of his pictures, "Keep your money. Gold is a death-blow to art." It has been said that “man's intellect receives its highest polish where gold and silver lose theirs." A little integrity is better than a great career of questionable method.

Luther's will stated that he left "no money, no treasures of any kind or description," yet the king did not sit upon his throne so securely as did Luther upon the throne of honor. -

“ There is a burden of care in getting riches," says Matthew Henry, " fear in keeping them, temptation in using them, guilt in abusing them, sorrow in losing them, and a burden of account at last to be given up concerning them."

"These are my jewels," said Cornelia to the Campanian lady who asked to see her gems; and she pointed with pride to her boys returning from school. The reply was worthy the daughter of Scipio Africanus and wife of Tiberius Gracchus. The most valuable production of any country is its crop of men.

He is the richest man who enriches his country most; in whom the people feel richest and proudest; who gives himself with his money; who opens the doors of opportunity widest to those about him; who is ears to the deaf, eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame. Such a man makes every acre of land in his community worth more, and makes richer every man who lives near him. On the other hand, many a millionaire has impoverished the town in which he lived, and lessened the value of every foot, of land.

"I know of no great man," said Voltaire, “except those who have rendered great services to the human race." Men are measured by what they do, not by what they possess.

"Is there a physician," asks Bulwer, "who has not felt at times how that ceremonious fee throws him back from the garden-land of humanity into the market-place of money-seems to put him out of the pale of equal friendship, and say: ' True, you have given health and life. Adieu ! there, you are paid for it' ? "

When a letter from Washington was read in Congress, suggesting the propriety of bombarding Boston, a solemn silence ensued, for all the members knew that their presiding officer, John Hancock, was a large owner of real estate in that town. To give him an opportunity to speak, the body resolved itself into a committee of the whole, when Mr. Hancock said: "It is true, sir, nearly all my property in, the world is in houses and other real estate in the town of Boston; but if the expulsion of the British army from it, and the liberties of our country, require their being burnt to ashes, issue the Order for that purpose immediately."

Barrows of Cambridge resigned his professorship to make a place for his pupil, Isaac Newton.

"If we work upon gold it will perish ; if upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust. But if we work upon immortal minds - if we imbue them with high principles, with the just fear of God, with manhood and the respect of it-we engrave on these tables something which no time can efface, but which will grow brighter through all eternity."

“Education - a debt due from present to future generations," was the sentiment found in a sealed envelope opened during the centennial celebration at Danvers, Mass. In the same envelope was a check for twenty thousand dollars for a town library and institute. The sender was George Peabody, one of the most remarkable men of this century, once a poor. boy, but then a millionaire banker. At another banquet given in his honor at Danvers, years afterwards, he gave two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the same institute. "Steadfast and undeviating truth," said he, "fearless and straightforward integrity, and an honor ever unsullied by an unworthy word or action, make their possessor greater than worldly success or prosperity. These qualities constitute greatness."

Neither a man's means, nor his worth, are measurable by his money. If he has a fat purse and a lean heart, a broad estate and a narrow understanding, what will his "means" do for him-what will his "worth" gain him ? What sadder sight is there than an old man who has spent his whole life getting instead of growing ? He has piled up books, statuary, and paintings, with his wealth, but he is a stranger amongst them. His soul has shriveled to that of a miser, and all his nobler instincts are dead.

The honesty and integrity of A. T. Stewart won for him a great reputation, and the young schoolmaster who began life in New York on less than a dollar a day, massed nearly forty million dollars, and there was not a smirched dollar in all those millions. Do you call him successful who wears a bulldog expression that but too plainly tells the story of how he gained his fortune, taking but never giving ? Can you not read in that brow-beating face the sad experience of widows and orphans ?

Do you call him a self-made man who has unmade others to make himself, - who tears others down to build himself up? Can a man be really rich who makes others poorer? Can he be happy in whose every lineament chronic avarice is seen as plainly as hunger in the countenance of a wolf ? How seldom sweet, serene, beautiful faces are seen on men who have been very successful as the world rates success! Nature expresses in the face and manner the sentiment which rules the heart.

When petitioned to license the opium traffic, the pagan emperor of China said: "Nothing will induce me to derive a revenue from the vice and misery of my people." But Christian England has been only too glad to derive an immense income from this very traffic, and Christian America still obtains large sums from the sale of licenses to dealers in alcoholic drinks. No wonder the state, which should be a father instead of a murderer, nourishes a degraded race of men, bereft of the old-fashioned virtues of pity, and benevolence, and generosity, who, wherever there is a glitter of gold, claw one another to obtain the vulgar metal.

In the days of the Abolitionists, a great " Union Saving Committee" of their opponents met at Castle Garden, New York, and decided that merchants who would not oppose the "fanatics " should be put on a “Black List" and crushed financially. Messrs. Bowen & McNamee, however, stated in their advertisements that they hoped to sell their silks, but would not sell their principles. Their independent stand created a great sensation throughout the country. People wanted to buy of men who would not sell themselves.

When Scipio Africanus was accused of peculation, he refused to disgrace himself by waiting for justification, though he had the scroll of his accounts in his hands. He immediately tore the paper to pieces before the tribanes.

When the corner-stone of the Washington monument was laid, July 4, 1848, Mr. Winthrop said: “ Build it to the skies -you cannot outreach the loftiness of his principles; found it upon the massive and eternal rock - you cannot make it more enduring than his fame; construct it of the purest Parian marble -you cannot make it purer than his life."

Webster said : "America has furnished to the world the character of Washington; if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind."

Where, asked Byron, -

"Where may the wearied eye repose When gazing on the great, Where neither guilty glory glows, Nor despicable state ! "Yes, one-the first, the last, the best, The Cincinnatus of the West, Whom envy dared not hate Bequeathed the name of Washington, To make men blush there was but one!"

Lord Erskine wrote to Washington: "You are the only being for whom I have an awful reverence." Charles James Fox, in the House of Commons; spoke of that "illustrious man, before whom all borrowed greatness sinks into insignificance."

Lord Brougham said: " Until time shall be no more, will a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington! "

Gladstone called Washington "the purest figure in history," and added: “If, among all the pedestals supplied by history for public characters of extraordinary nobility and purity, I saw one higher than all the rest, and if I were required at a moment's notice to name the fittest occupant for it, I think my choice, at any time within the last forty-five years, would have lighted, and it would now light, upon Washington !"

Fisher Ames wrote: “He changed mankind's ideas of political greatness." Lafayette, speaking of his friend, said: "Never did I behold so superb a man."

" We look with amazement," wrote an eminent thinker, "on such eccentric characters as Alexander, Caesar, Cromwell, Frederick, and Napoleon, but when Washington's face rises before us, instinctively mankind exclaims, ' This is the man for nations to trust and reverence, and for rulers to follow.” Washington practiced the profound diplomacy of truthful speech, -the consummate tact of direct attention.

Lincoln always yearned for a rounded wholeness of character; and his fellow lawyers called him "perversely honest." Nothing could induce him to take the wrong side of a case, or to continue on that side after learning that it was unjust or hopeless. After giving considerable time to a case in which he had received from a lady a retainer of two hundred dollars, he returned the money, saying: "Madam, you have not a peg to hang your case on." "But you have earned that money," said the lady. "No, no," replied Lincoln, "that would not be right. I can't take pay for doing my duty:'

"The greatest works," says Waters, "have brought the least benefit to their authors. They were beyond the reach of appreciation before appreciation came. The benefactors of mankind have never stooped to the quest of lucre. Who can conceive of Socrates or St Paul, Martin Luther or John Wesley, John Hampden or George Washington, scheming to make money ?"

There should be something in a man's life greater than his occupation or his achievements; grander than acquisition or -wealth; higher than genius; more enduring than fame. Men and nations put their trust in education, culture, and the refining influences of civilized life, but these alone can never elevate or save a people. Art, luxury, and degradation have been boon companions all down the centuries.

Phidias was adding the last touch of grace to Grecian art in the Parthenon when the glory of Athens departed. Rome fell when art was in its golden age, while Mars, Bacchus, and Venus sat upon the throne of the Czsars. Wealth is demoralizing when obtained at the sacrifice of character. The more money a man or nation has, the more moral strength is needed to protect from its demoralizing influence.

A man may make millions, and be a failure still. Money-making is not the highest success. The life of a well-known millionaire was not truly successful. He had but one ambition. He coined his very soul into dollars. The almighty dollar was his sun, and was mirrored in his heart. He strangled all other emotions and hushed and stifled all nobler aspirations. He grasped his riches tightly, till stricken by the scythe of death; when, in the twinkling of an eye, he was transformed from one of the richest men who ever lived in this world to one of the poorest souls that ever went out of it.

“The truest test of civilization," says Emerson, “ is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops; no, but the kind of man the country turns out."

Character is success, and there is no other. The passion for wealth often stifles every noble aspiration. Rothschild was called “one of the most devout worshipers that ever laid a withered soul upon the altar of Mammon." Is it any wonder that our young men start out with a false idea of the great object of life, when they see everybody else bowing and scraping and running after the men with crowns of gold upon their beads, but with corruption in their hearts ? When a lady is married, people ask, " Did she marry well ? " That is, did she marry money; not, did she marry an honest, clean, upright man ?

Can anything be more pitiable than a fat purse and a lean soul, a large house and a small character?

"When I asked you for anecdotes upon the age of this king," said Voltaire, while preparing his "History of Louis XIV.," “ I referred less to the king himself than to the art which flourished in his reign. I should prefer details relating to Racine and Boileau, to Sully, Moliere, Lebrun, Bossuet, Poussin, Descartes, and others, than to the battle of Steinkirk. Nothing but a name remains of those who commanded battalions and fleets, nothing results to the human race from a hundred battles gained; but the great men of whom I have spoken prepared pure and durable delights for generations unborn. A canal that connects the seas, a picture by Poussin, a beautiful tragedy, a discovered truth, are things a thousand times more precious than all the annals of the court, than all the narratives of war. You know that with me great men rank first, heroes last. I call great men those who have excelled in the useful or the agreeable. The ravagers of provinces are mere heroes."

"Not a child did I injure," says the epitaph of an Egyptian ruler who lived in a pagan age more than forty centuries ago. "Not a widow did I oppress. Not a herdsman did I ill treat. There were no beggars in my day, no one starved in my time. And when the years of famine came, I ploughed. all the lands of the province to its northern and southern boundaries, feeding its inhabitants and providing their food. There was no starving person in it, and I made the widow to be as though she possessed a husband." What ruler can say as much in our enlightened age ?

“When real history shall be written by the truthful and the wise," says Ingersoll, "the kneelers at the shrines of chance and fraud, the brazen idols once worshiped as gods, shall be the very food of scorn, while those who have borne the burden of defeat, who have earned and kept their self-respect, who have never bowed to men or power, will wear upon their brows the laurel mingled with the oak."

Emerson well said that the advantage of riches remains with him who procured them, not with the heir. "When I go into my garden with a spade," he says, "and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health, that I discover I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands. But not only health, but education, is in the work. Is it possible that I who get indefinite quantities of sugar, hominy, cotton, buckets, crockery-ware, and letter-paper, by simply signing my name once in three months to a check in favor of John Smith & Co., traders, get the fair shale of exercise to my faculties by that act, which nature intended for me in making all these far-fetched matters important to my comfort? "

"My kingdom for a horse," said Richard III. of England amid the press of Bosworth Field. "My kingdom for a moment," said Queen Elizabeth on her death-bed. And millions of others, when they have felt earth, its riches and power slipping from their grasp, have shown plainly that deep down in their hearts they value such things at naught when really compared with the blessed light of life, the stars and flowers, the companionship of- friends, and far above all else, the opportunity of
growth and development here and of preparation for future life.

History shows that the time always comes when anguish and hunger rise greater than wealth and crush it. That was the story of the French Revolution. What anarchist is so base as to have threatened George W. Childs, of Philadelphia, because he was a rich man ? He might blow up others, but not Mr. Childs. Is it not because, the famous editor exhibited something in his character greater than wealth, that irresistibly softened hatred, drew the hungry to him for bread, the ignorant for education, the homeless for a home ?

He was here to supply those needs, and the love of humanity, and the sympathy for all kinds of want and suffering, -these were the greatest things in the world to him. Doing good to others, he said, was the greatest pleasure of his life. History demonstrates what the Bible teaches, that love is the greatest thing in the world. A beautiful illustration comes to us from the life of Mr. Charles N. Crittendon, who has strikingly lived up to the Golden Rule. When he became as rich as he thought he ought to be, he took into partnership five of the heads of departments in his great wholesale house in New York. The voluntary transfer by a man of large means, of a large interest in his business to his employees without the payment of a penny, is unique in this money-grasping age.

Mr. Crittendon devotes his entire time to evangelistic work, and his fortune to founding Florence. Crittendon missions for the rescue of erring girls. The story of their founding melts all hearts to tenderness and all eyes to tears. A few years ago, his little four-year-old Florence, on her dying bed, pleaded: "Papa, sing ‘The Sweet By and By.’ ” “With choking voice and breaking heart her father sang the beautiful words, and her beloved spirit floated heavenward on the wings of song. Mr. Crittendon went down into the slums and helped to uplift the fallen, and one night when he was pleading with a poor erring girl to leave her life of shame, he said in the words of Christ: "Neither do I condemn thee ; go and sin no more." Through her tears she said, "Where can I go ? "

Quick as a flash came the thought, "Where can she go ? Scarce a door save a door of sin is open to her;" and then and there he determined, as a memorial to his own little Florence, to found a home where other fathers' little girls, lost in the whirlpool of shame, might be rescued and restored to a life of virtue. So on Bleecker Street, New York, a few years ago, was opened the first Florence Crittendon Mission, a large double four-story house, where food and shelter and clothing and a home are freely given, and under the influence of Mother Prindle, the W. C. T. U. matron, hundreds become Christian women. Over five hundred girls annually find a home here, and three fourths of them are redeemed.

Mr. Crittendon has also established Florence Crittendon missions in New Brunswick, N. J., San Jose, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, California.

It is the dream of his life to found a Florence Crittendon mission in every large city in America and Europe, and plans to that end are made with the woman's Christian Temperance Union, under the leadership of Miss Frances E., Willard and Lady Henry Somerset.

Thank God! there are some things beyond the reach of "influence" and better than the madness for a brown-stone front. Gold cannot vie with virtue, and social position does not create manhood. Trusts and monopolies only control the lower things of life.

There are men who choose honesty as a soul companion. They live in it, with it, by it. They embody it in their actions and lives. Their words speak it. Their faces beam it. Their actions proclaim it. Their
hands are true to it. Their feet tread its path. They are full of it. They love it. It is to them like a God. Not gold, or crowns, or fame, could bribe them to leave it. It makes them beautiful men, noble, great, brave, righteous men.

No man has come to true greatness," said Phillips Brooks, " who has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to his race, and that what God gives him, He gives him for mankind."

“The rank is but the guinea's stamp The man's the gowd for a' thhal' "

The noblest men that live on earth Are men whose hands are brown with toil, Who, backed by no ancestral graves, Hew down the woods and till the soil, And win thereby a prouder name Than follows king's or warrior's fame."